Bill Granger - The November Man

“How much money?” Devereaux said.

“Let me enjoy myself for a minute,” Denisov said. “It gives me pleasure to think you must need me. I owe you so much.”

“Fifty thousand dollars,” Devereaux said.

The smile faded. The blank face of the careful agent replaced it.

“There is an aerospace company in California. They are to award the contract. I mean, they will receive the contract for a certain plane. I think no one knows this now except your government. So for four thousand shares of stock, perhaps I will become even more a capitalist.”

“That’s insider trading, Denisov. It’s against the law.”

Denisov did not smile.

“You can’t fix Wall Street,” Devereaux said.

“There is no free dinner.”

“Free lunch.”

“Agreed,” Denisov said.

“It will be done,” Devereaux said. “Now tell me about Nutcracker.”

“I know nothing. It was a phrase. A subcontractor in London who must think he knows everything but he knows nothing. He said there was chatter out of Cheltenham, the Americans were working on something called Nutcracker. That was all. Realignment of networks in Berlin. But it was chatter, even gossip, and you know that Cheltenham is a sieve. You cannot believe anything that comes from there.”

Cheltenham was the mole-ridden listening post shared by the Americans and British in the English west country. Cheltenham eavesdropped on the radio “chatter” of the world and tried to make sense of all that it heard. Nutcracker was a name, something that had been dropped by computer or transatlantic phone or radio transmitter—it was an odd name of some odd thing that had struck Denisov in memory and now, in this damp and dirty public house in Dover, had been retrieved by a retired American agent.

“And you know this one,” Devereaux said. He was pointing at the picture.

“I do not think so.”

“When will you tell me who she is?”

“Perhaps I must understand what this is. What this is about. So there is no danger for me,” Denisov said. “I do not trust you too far.”

“This does not concern you.”

“I will see if that is true.”

“She came to kill me. Who is she?”

“Perhaps I do not know yet. Perhaps in a little time, I will know.”

“KGB,” Devereaux said.

“Perhaps.”

“And these are photographs of the men she killed.”

They were morgue shots, obtained from Boll along with the drawing of the woman. One of the faces had been obliterated.

“I do not know them.”

“I do. They were KGB. Resolutions Committee.”

“They wore cards? Did they tell you before they died?”

“They were identified.”

“And KGB kills KGB?”

Devereaux stared into the eyes of the saint. “Yes. Think about it: KGB kills KGB.”

“And R Section?” Denisov tried a shy smile. “Does R Section kill its own?”

“Perhaps.”

“Someone called you. In Lausanne. And then these things happen. Do you kill R Section, my friend? Is R Section to kill you?”

Devereaux said nothing.

“You speak madness,” Denisov said. “You say nothing to me but your quiet is madness. You want me to say that KGB kills its own and that R Section kills its own? Speak, my friend, and tell me why I should play this mad game for you.”

“For four thousand shares of stock,” Devereaux said.

Denisov sighed. “My weakness. It is my only weakness.”

“It’s greed.”

“I am a careful man.”

“You stole from KGB when you worked the Resolutions Committee. You steal now. I don’t care. I want to know about this woman. And about Nutcracker—”

“Four thousand shares. Must I trust you?”

“I will call Krueger and make the purchase through him. Is that satisfactory?”

Krueger was a man in Zurich who kept all the accounts and knew all the numbers and was an honest broker for every side because he was on no side but his own. Denisov nodded.

“He holds them until you deliver,” Devereaux said.

“Good. Be careful. Always be careful and do not trust too much,” Denisov said.

Leo said he didn’t mind. Leo was an easygoing sort of man, which suited Lydia Neumann to a T. They always drove in spring. Sometimes to Florida, sometimes to Canada for the last of the winter carnivals in places like Montreal and Quebec City. They brought their own weather with them, their mutual comforts, their sense of each other. It was hard to believe that after seventeen years of marriage they still wanted to be alone with each other. They had no children and yet they still expected children in the vague and rosy future.

They went to the Midwest this time because Lydia had to see the woman in Chicago.

“Besides,” Leo had said, “I haven’t been in Chicago since the navy. Took boot camp at Great Lakes. We went down to Chicago on Saturday and used to hang around the Walgreen drugstore in the Loop, right on State Street. Wait for the girls to come down and look for us. We had a lot of fun.”

“Did you meet many girls, Leo?”

“Oh, some. I guess. I don’t remember.”

He did remember, of course. Lydia smiled fondly at her husband.

And yet she was not relaxed. She had to do this one thing. She probably should not even do this.

Leo was to spend the morning in the Loop, staring up at the tall buildings as though he had never seen such wonders. The day was bright, crisp, full of crowds on the wide walks of Michigan Avenue. The old elevated trains rattled around the screeching curves of the Loop. Leo had a Polaroid camera and took lots of pictures of buildings, monuments, the Picasso statue and the Chagall Wall, and of pretty girls on Dearborn Street who reminded him of all the pretty girls he had known as a sailor a long time before.

Lydia Neumann entered the IBM Consumer Product Center precisely at nine A.M. At 9:02, the attractive black woman, in businesslike attire from Saks Fifth Avenue down the street, crossed to her, smiled the automatic IBM smile, and took her to see the woman visible in the glass office beyond the carpeting.

“Hello.”

The voice belonged to a breed of professional class raised in the last generation that has no regional inflection, no accent, no betrayal in voice of any background at all. The voice suited her surroundings and her looks. She was a white replica of the black woman with a different wardrobe. Her eyes were defined in a businesslike way by eyeliner—just enough—and her mouth by lipstick—not too much. Her clothes spoke of being a bit more expensive than one might expect from one so young. Her blouse was silk but not revealing. Her hair was mousey brown and broken up into swaths to reveal a $125 haircut.

Lydia Neumann patted her own spikes created by Leo every three weeks or so. She sat down and didn’t smile and waited for the smile of the young woman to fade.

“How can I help you?” The voice was eager, formless, nearly a controlled squeal. It revealed nothing.

“My name is Neumann but you musn’t mention that again,” Lydia Neumann said. She felt the weight of what she was about to do. What did any of it have to do with her? And then she thought of Hanley.

“All right, Ms. Neumann.” She was as uncluttered as her office. Her figure was slight and everything about her was what Mrs. Neumann hoped she would not find. Still, she had to try. It was all she could do.

“I work. In an agency. Of government.”

She let the words sink in. They didn’t. The young woman with the poised Mont Blanc pen and the unringed fingers and the recent Bahamian tan was not impressed because it meant nothing to her.

It was hopeless, Lydia Neumann thought.

And then she thought of Hanley and tried again.